Bill Gates Says Next Windows Coming Next Year or So

A strange quote from Bill Gates today as he claims the next version of Windows, code-named Windows 7, is going to be released "sometime in the next year or so." That's way ahead of the previous estimates, which claimed Windows 7 was not going to be released in 2009 at all, but somewhere in 2010 or 2011.

A Microsoft flack covered for Bill by saying that a 2009 "release" was in line with their development cycle, and that test versions are usually put out before the actual release—which is totally not what we think Bill meant when he said "release". What you should take away from this whole mess is that a development release is coming in 2009 (or so), and Bill Gates probably shouldn't be making statements without checking with his people.

Next year would be rather too early for a new version of Windows to come out.

Many people on XP have no intention of going to Vista, due to its being a total resource hog (many computers can't even run it, let alone other applications), and many stories of people having problems with it. I could name off many people that I personally know who went back to XP after trying Vista. I can see grounds for a new release so quickly.

Of course they wouldn't want word out yet on such an early release if that's the case, they'd still want to push as many copies of Vista onto people as possible before the next release. Either that, or Mr. Gates just made an incorrect statement and there's no such plans, one of the two.